It's strange; I found little to disagree with in this post, but when I went back to read the original, something about it rubbed me the wrong way. It seems to

It's strange; I found little to disagree with in this post, but when I went back to read the original, something about it rubbed me the wrong way. It seems to me that this response was written because people (including myself) get jumpy when the death of the Web is mentioned -- they conflate the Web with the open principles underlying the Internet, and a BDFL there runs counter to those principles. I don't really have a dog in the fight as far as HTML etc. are concerned, though I do think the benefits of having an open-standards, (mostly) consistent rendering framework and execution environment across all major platforms and architectures, including mobile devices, far (far!) outweigh the drawbacks of our retrofitting what began as a document markup language. I'll stick with it until we -- or if Joe has his way, a charismatic visionary -- can come up with a more appropriate replacement.